Browsed byCategory: Tutorials

RSS (Rich Site Summary, previously known as Really Simple Syndication) is a way for net savy users to stay in touch with the news and what’s going on their favorite websites in a quick way.

Unlike Business sites, blogs and news sites always keep getting updates and we cannot go to 50 sites and read everything on every day. This is where RSS comes in handy as it gives summary of each update on the website. Users subscribe to feeds and then use Google reader and other RSS reader applications to stay in touch. If they like the news/post they can open it from within RSS reader and go to site. This helps save time and also bandwidth.

Let’s see how we can easily burn a feed for our website or blog and manage it. The search Engine Giant Google, gives us an easy way to do that.

Step 1: Go to http://feedburner.google.com/ and Sign in

It will ask you for your Google username and password (which is same as your GMAIL).

Step 2: You will see a Burn a feed and then an empty field below it. You have to type your site’s address there. Click “Next”

Step 3: You will see Identify Feed Source screen and usually it will give you back two fields for feed. First one is simply site’s feed which is for site’s updates, second is for comments if you want to see comments in feed. We will choose site here and click next.

Example: http://wplight.com/feed

It will tell your feed title and address of feed where people can find your feed.
An example would be: http://feeds.feedburner.com/wplight/xbYF
It will show you a congrats screen informing you that your feed is live.

You can go to that address to check and it will show you list of programs with which you can subscribe to feed.

Coming back to Congrats screen, you can go to add additional feedburner stats from options or you can skip to feed management from here. Take some time to explore from here.

Email / Newsletter Subscribe

Now here some users might also want that their subscribers will get email whenever there is new update on the website. It is just like a newsletter which will pop in their inboxes when any updates goes in feed.
Here’s how we allow subscribers to get mail:
Go in feed management. You will see four tabs here:
Analyze (You will see subscribers and other stats here)
Optimize (You can manage podcasting and also itunes settings for your feed from here)
Publicize (Feed Counts and email subscriptions along with options of republishing your feed as an HTML page)
Troubleshootize (You can get tips and help to fix problems in your feed and ping it from here)

We go to Publicize section and click on Email Subscriptions which appear on left side in blue.

WE click on the activate button so that we allow users to subscribe by email.
It will show us the subscription code which we can insert on our site so that when users click on that they will be redirected to FeedBurner email subscription where they enter their email and confirm the request.
Copy the code and insert it on the website wherever you want it to appear. Scroll down the page and click save.

Email Subscribe for Genesis Theme Users

Those using Genesis theme, can install the Genesis eNews Extended plugin to easily add mail subscribe form to their sites. The Genesis eNews which came built-in the Genesis framework is now deprecated since Genesis 1.9 was launched. So we use this plugin.

After you install this plugin you can go to widgets and you can put the Genesis eNews Extended widget to your desired sidebar. It will open up a list of options which you have to fill.

The title will be the title of widget. Then the text which you want to be shown in the subscribe form. It will then ask you for your Feedburner ID. To find the ID, you go to Feedburner page and you go to the My Feeds section, which is usually shown right after you sign in. Then you click on the website feed of your site (Yes you can have more than one feeds here and each will have different id).
Open up the desired feed. In the URL Address bar, you will see your id, it will appear like this.
http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/dashboard?id= xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The xxx after the Id= is your Feedburner ID. Insert it in the widget of the plugin, and VIOLA! It works!!!

Your email subscribe form is ready and whenever you post something new on your site, you don’t have to worry about sending emails to each user you know.

WordPress has Twenty Twelve installed by default. You can change it by going in the Appearance tab on the left in Dashboard.

As you move your mouse over to the Appearance tab, a new menu will pop up, displaying a variety of options, including the first option “Themes”. Click on Themes, and then it will open the “Manage Themes” tab. There is a tab on its side namely “Install Themes”, click it. It will give you option to search. You can search theme by color combination, columns (number of columns), width (Fixed or flexible) and even search by features and subject of your blog.

Not only that you can also upload your own created themes or the downloaded premium themes. You can view featured themes (that are currently trending on WordPress) and also see the newest themes on the block by clicking on newest tab. The Recently Updated tab shows the themes that have been updated recently. A nice way to look at the themes which are getting updates regularly.

After you search a theme you are given three options. You can install it right away or you can preview it before installing and you can also view details of the theme.

As you click on install theme it will ask you to activate afterwards as in the picture below. Activate it and Enjoy.

Each theme you install gives you different options. Some give you header customization and menu option while some don’t support them. If header is changeable the header option along with theme options will appear in the sub-menu of Appearance tab.

You have to play with the theme options which vary with each theme so we cannot provide details for them for now as there are over thousands of themes. However feel free to send us your queries in mail and we will reply you as soon as possible.

As soon as you get bored with the normal functionality of the website and want to step further in the features and functions area, you go ahead and install the WordPress Plugins. There are over 22,000 plugins out there waiting for you. To search or install a plugin, you have to go to Plugins Tab that appears on the left in the Dashboard below the Appearance Tab.

Click on the Plugins Tab, and on the right you will see a new open tab, which will show you the currently installed plugins. Below each name will be a button to either activate or deactivate them. On the right side will be their description and creator name. Also there will be an option to visit the publisher’s site. You can see these in the picture below:

As you can see in the picture, all the plugins here are activated. You can click on the “Add New” button in the upper left to add new plugins. You can also perform a search within the currently installed plugins (if you have installed too many). To delete a plugin you have to first deactivate it, and then the delete option will be available in the same place where we see the “Deactivate” and “Edit” buttons. You can also edit the plugin files if you are good at coding stuff.

As you click on the “Add New” button you will be presented with new screen (similar to themes install screen)

You can search plugin according to your needs. If you need plugin for search engine optimization, you can search by keyword “SEO” and you will find lots of plugins. You can also try out by clicking the popular tags which appear below the search field. Click on Facebook and it will open a list of Facebook plugins.

You can also upload plugins as you did themes by just clicking on the upload button, searching for your files and uploading them. You can view featured and popular plugins too. As a starting example go ahead and try out a plugin by typing in the search field, “statpress visitors”. Install it by clicking on “Install Now” button. This plugin helps you in viewing visitor and spider statistics. It is great if you want to analyze which keywords are bringing traffic to your site and where you need focus on. It also tells you which browser was the user using and whether the visitor subscribed to feed or not.

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